CPU Upgrade in 2009 4,1?

[macmee]

(I will preface this with saying from the get go that I've never as much as seen a mac pro in person so lets just assume that I am incredibly dumb)

Ok so I can buy this:

Apple A1289 Mac Pro 2009 Quad-Core Xeon 2.66GHz

which appears to be a single core 2009 MP.

Am I correct in that I can flash it to 5,1 and buy a single 6 core upgrade for it, and that since it's single core it's not lidless so all this is pretty easy to do?

Also, it is also possible to buy some sort of tray and upgrade to 12 cores, but this is super hard to do and probably costs a fortune, right? Also that will be lidless and I'll need to buy washers and do some sort of magic?

 

[ActionableMango]

You seem to have done your homework. That all sounds right to me.

Dual proc trays are expensive. If you ever want to go dual processor the best time is now before you've bought the computer--just buy one that's dual processor to begin with.

To do the 5,1 flash you'll need a proper Mac video card, or one flashed with Mac EFI anyway. That's probably the case with nearly every single Mac you'd find for sale anyway--I only mention it to be complete.